The present invention relates to pager programming systems, in general, and more particularly to a non-contact pager programming system governed by command and data words generated by a user interactive central controller to program and read the pager's non-volatile memory which includes registers for storing a plurality of data words to characterize the operation of the pager.
Contemporary pagers are generally controlled by a digital controller, like a microcomputer, for example, and include a non-volatile memory, commonly referred to as a code plug, for storing data words in registers thereof to characterize the operation of the pager. Accordingly, the various options, features and functions of a pager may be programmed via the code plug using a pager programmer.
Current pager products come in sizes and shapes varying from a wrist watch to a parallelepiped container resembling a small tape recorder, for example. In addition, each pager product may include a different electrical connector for physical contact to a programmer. Consequently, a unique code plug programmer may be needed for some pager products because of their different size and shape and unique physical connector.
In addition, because of the demands to miniaturize the pager products, the code plug programming connections present a problem because they occupy much needed pager product volume. Another demand on pager manufacturers is to produce a water resistant pager which presents a further problem with regard to the need for disassembling the product to make physical contact when programming the code plug thereof.
Thus, it appears completely desirable to provide a universal programmer which may program a variety of pager products of different shapes and sizes to avoid the need to design and build a unique programmer for each. It would be further desirable to make the universal programmer perform the programming operation of the code plug of the pager product without having to make physical contact therewith. It would be even further desirable to achieve the non-contact programming operations without having to redesign the hardware of the pager(s) to be programmed. The present invention achieves these and other objects which will become more evident from the following description of a preferred embodiment of the invention taken together with the accompanying figures of the drawing therefor.